“We don’t have a clinic anymore; all we have is a room with hope inside,” murmured a villager in Abanta who did not want to be named, giving a look at the rented room now serving as the community’s makeshift health post. The room, filled with gloom and musty smells, houses a rickety piece of plastic table, some drug bottles tossed all over the place, and lone piece of wooden bench, which is nothing that a Primary Health Centre (PHC) would be.
This room turned out to be the only health post of the community after a long land dispute had forced Abanta residents to leave the initial primary health centre erected up on the land owned by their neighbours in Alase. The conflict, based on claims of ownership of land and boundary lines, has not only split the communities but it has broken a lifeline to healthcare.
Land as a Barrier to Life when Land Is.
The Abanta Primary Health Centre was, therefore, tactfully erected in a walking distance from both communities though technically on Alase land. Decades of unresolved land ownership became boiling point of open hostility. The tensions reached boiling point in recent times when the Alase community claimed the land back and is also said to have demanded to control the facility.
Instead of letting people outside control their healthcare centre, Abanta villagers took a step, and they did it literally. The health centre was abandoned. “We could not keep on operating with a facility out of our hands,” said a community elder. It’s not pride it is about safety and dignity.
Since then, Abanta residents have been left with no choice but to take the matters in their hands. They have established a foundation of a new health centre in their village. However, with little support for the government and scarce resources in the community, the project has stalled. For the meantime, the whole community depended on a rented single room apartment as a makeshift health post which is far too insufficient for a population of more than 3000.
From Healthcare to No Care
The most lamentable effect of this struggle may be the reassignment of the only extension health worker who was posted to Abanta. During the mayhem and movement, the health worker was transferred to another area, and, as a result, no trained individual was left in the community to dispense care.
We can’t even find a man to give us injections or help deliver babies anymore,” complained a young mother whose toddler had a fever last week. Today we go to the nearest villages or we simply pray for healing.
The transfer, although an administrative document on paper, successfully disrupted professional healthcare delivery in Abanta. Without certified personnel in the interim centre and a lack of access to necessary drugs, pregnant women, children, and the aged are left to the mercy of fate.
A community health volunteer tries to intervene at times but without equipment, with drugs or technical knowledge. Another resident said, “When the trained health worker walked out, it was as if our hopes walked out with her”.
Voices from Within
The new foundation location of Abanta meant to host the clinic that was to be self-funded by Abanta is only a bare block structure that is only less than four feet high. Weeds grow their way up around the base of the wall, scattered rusted wheelbarrows and abandoned blocks imply that struggle that is yet to come. The community still collects small amounts from the people, carries out fund raising activities and praying to philanthropists or NGOs to rescue them.
“We can’t do this alone. Health should not be political and God forbid, become the subject of land disputes,” begged an elder who has led many collections for the community.
People from the town narrate about their new life with frustration and resignation. One woman told her ordeal of being rushed to a far-off clinic in Ilorin because of a suspected miscarriage, only to be told that she had come too late.
Others narrate how many common fevers become deadly because of lack of treatment.
They feel that it is like punishing them for a war that they did not start: “It’s like we’ve been punished for a conflict we didn’t start,” a local youth said. “Now we suffer in silence.”
A Call for Urgent Intervention
The Abanta-Alase land dispute is a good wake-up reminder that the health infrastructure is not spared from sociopolitical crises. When there is no government mediation, and support, community members are pushed into desperate improvisation.
Health experts warn that such dysfunctions in rural healthcare systems cause an increase in maternal deaths, preventable child mortality, reliance on unregulated drug vendors – already rife in rural Nigeria.
This is not only a land issue. “it is a health emergency”, a public health advocate in Kwara State said. “The government has to step in – not just to solve the land problem but to restore access to healthcare and assign new health workers to Abanta right away”, – Malia added.
Until when, the people of the village of Abanta remain living on the edge – of land, of health, and of survival.
This story was produced for the Frontline Investigative Program and supported by the Africa Data Hub and Orodata Science.